Thing-a-day.com

So I haven’t actually posted what I’ve been up to for the last week or so, but I have been creating.  At the very least I doodled in my paperback which has taught me that even 30 seconds of scribbling is better for my creative juices than sitting on my rear end doing nothing.

24-26:  Doodles

27: Gave myself a haircut.  (Shortened to a pixie!)

28: Posted on my blog.  (I am stretching here, but I am giving myself a break on this one.)

29:  Still have a few hours, so we’ll see.

Here is to creating/destroying/documenting/pushing ourselves to do something.  Now, maybe I’ll go sew…

Day 22 Thing:  More doodling in the paperback.  This time with rough, spirally circles which I actually expanded upon by using them in my …

Day 23 Thing:  A very rough, preliminary idea of what my business cards could look like.  I am struggling to find something I can repurpose/reuse for cards (and will probably just go for professionally printed instead).  But in the meantime I found a previously-painted section of watercolor paper that I then sketched over…

I would like to go for a unique shape/size such as this square version, and may go back to punched holes rather than circles…

I am liking this post-every-few-days thing that I have going.  Probably cheating, so don’t tell on me.

Day 20 Thing:  more paperback sketching.  This time with straight, varying lines.

Day 21 Thing: A quick store tote in a cheesy (but cheery) 70s/80s bedsheet.  And since it is so thin I can roll it up quite small and always have it on hand for the checkout line.

Day 18 Thing:  A dry-run set up of the table for my first craft fair.  (It goes along with the student fashion show at the local UC.)  It turned out quite nicely, but rather than show those pics, I am including a much more inspiring one of the buttons I just picked up at Thrift Town for my cuffs/headbands:

Day 19 Thing:  A handwritten note to my dear friend.  Another favorite thrift store of mine supports the local SPCA and has a great collection of old/vintage greeting cards.  This one is a (not-vintage) hilarious, slightly fuzzy, photo of a groundhog (?) glued to a card.

Mr. Man and I went on a walk at a nearby converted air force base and I came home with a few pictures of concrete.  Beautiful, ruined concrete of all things.

Catch up post.  This certainly hasn’t been Post-A-Day, but at least I am still creating every day.

Day 13:  I altered my Division of Safety of Dams thrifted t-shirt so it fits and can be proudly worn in public.  Don’t you love that there is a whole division devoted to the safety of large concrete structures–like they watch out so the dams don’t fall down and scrape their knees.

Day 14:  Another blurry night picture.

Day 15:  More scribbling in my paperback art journal.  This was  fun with rectangles on page 90 but it didn’t exactly turn out picture-worthy.

Day 16:  A “draft” framed version of one of my wire pieces.  This one always reminded me of a grasshopper so it went onto green fabric board with sewn tracing paper weeds.  Seeing it posted is really helping me detach and figure out what I want to change.

On the way back into the house tonight I looked up in our giant tree (I call it giant only because when THAT MANY leaves fall from one tree it is the biggest tree in the world).  The spindly ends of the branches were lit from below in this great way and I thought–my digital camera is amazing–even if I never learned to use it properly–and I bet something will show up.  So I took some pictures, and of course they turned out all crazy.  But there is something about them that I still like.

Then again, maybe I am just trying too hard to like the unlikeable.

When you are trying desperately to find a way to justify playing Rock Band as your Thing-A-Day it is a sure sign that you need to sit down and make something.

I pulled out some wire and made an abstract, kinda teardrop shaped piece that incorporates the repetition of asymmetrical shapes that I have been enjoying lately.  But, just as a guitar solo world tour does not an artist make, crappy lighting on silver wire is not a feast for the eyes.  So instead, here is a pic of a similar wire piece that gives you the general feel of what I came up with today.

Today was round two of cutting a stamp for my sales tags.  (Because I am impatient and my camera battery is dead you get to see why today had to be round two.  Round one , below, consisted of me merrily chopping off the last “e” on the first try.  Geez.)

Looks a lot rougher than it actually turns out.  And this is much easier than one might expect.

1.  Print your text or image in reverse.  [Black and white with no gradation works best.]

2.  Use rubber cement to attach print-out to stamp material, image facing up so you can easily see it.  [Could use eraser or buy new from craft/art store.]

3.  Slowly score around the part you want to stamp with a sharp Exacto blade.

4.  Remove outline of paper template and start carefully removing excess rubber from around image.

Pie.  Easy as.

Just having fun with the macro setting on my camera:

Just a handful of (grapevine?) twigs on my windowsill.

Day eight was more quick-as-you-can scribbling in my paperback journal.  Like so.

This practice is really about getting me out of that vacuum of “I don’t want to make anything and would rather just stare at the TV since it is too late to make something anyway.”  Because, really.  How hard can it be to doodle for a few seconds?  And maybe  I’ll even be inspired by the doodling when I flip back through the book.

I am helping my brother(in-law) come up with a way of presenting a short written piece to somebody so that it is more substantial than your average note.  Because of the sad nature of this keepsake, just handing over a sheet of printer paper isn’t exactly appropriate.  Here is the mock-up of what came to mind.

Still a day late in posting, but my thing for Day Six was a comprehensive list of display/promotional items to make, procure, or (gasp!) possibly buy for my upcoming craft fair.  (Anyone with suggestions on where to get nice, inexpensive business cards or postcards printed–please let me know.)  I love making lists of all sorts of things–big nerd–and while this one is long it is also inspiring me to get away from the computer and start creating.

The thing I made on day five was…my voice heard.

I voted in Super Tuesday.

Thing-A-Day has turned into Experiment-A-Day for me.  Here is a close-up of the fabric bookmarks (?) that I am working towards.

It was super simple: Rectangle of thrifted vintage bed sheet sewn on slightly larger rectangle of stiff grey felt.

Day three found me at a flea market (dud) and a thrift store (score!).  More of a Puppy Bowl kind of girl than a Super Bowl chick.  Besides the purchases for future creativity I also pulled out my reclaimed electrical copper wire and started fiddling.  Despite being just a test run, I am trying to embrace the imperfect in life.

I’ll be participating in a local craft fair in March (my first!) with three of my friends and I’m quite excited. Here is what I made today–a cuff made from a vintage thrifted tie.

I’ll be making more of these and some other fun accessories to sell. Did I say how excited I am?

(More: http://flickr.com/photos/21066880@N05/)

A great new exercise for me has been to quickly experiment with lines, dots and repetition in an art journal I created from an old paperback.

See more on my blog.